The fall of petroleum
civilization: peak oilwill take place primarily
in the U.S. as it is most dependent on limited resources.
Helpful in understanding trends is an honest assessment of alternative energy,
in terms of potential for a given population size and number of decades
usage.
Additionally, U.S. foreign policy can be glimpsed more and more clearly in its
drive to maintain its oil-fueled, corporate-based empire.

- from a New York Times op-ed article by Thomas Homer-Dixon and S.
Julio Friedmann, published: March 25, 2005 (see nytimes.com)

This oil-exploration/extraction fact should tell anyone that the peak of
global oil production, and the even greater historical impact of the peak,
is nigh if not upon us.

This article is a good balloon-buster of the usual technofixes, but then it
offers its own technofix of gasification at power plants, as an example of
"bridge technologies." The gasification creates "superhot
gas that is rich in hydrogen" and the two byproducts, supposedly, are
hydrogen (supposedly available for energy), and carbon dioxide which
supposedly can be pumped into the earth and stashed indefinitely. How
this approach begins to deal with (or fail to deal with) the other myriad
uses of petroleum, from an energy and materials supply standpoint, is not
mentioned.

It was disappointing to see this unworkable "solution" of
gasification offered for substituting petroleum, as if electric power and
some hydrogen solve the dilemma of petroleum depletion and climate change.
Petroleum supplies will be extremely short right after the peak of petroleum
extraction is felt. Ignored in this op-ed, as always, is the fact that the
whole economic, industrial and agricultural infrastructure is
petroleum-wired. When the shortage is noticed by volatile markets, the
doo-doo will hit the fan with devastating, permanent impact that cannot be
under-emphasized. The fact that the U.S. is overpopulated is a prime
concern when petroleum fails to provide as spectacularly as it has.

The op-ed discussed conservation and energy efficiency only as "demand
side" management, without giving much credence to their potential for
saving our lives and the biosphere. It seems impossible for people
such as these authors and almost everyone else in the mainstream media to
visualize a local-based economic system that is truly sustainable. No
surprise, when they bow down to car makers' advertising dollars in the
billions. Mainly, it is about a mindset that places nature on the back
burner -- but she's boiling over instead of nurtured and revered.

This is the op-ed's full treatment on cutting demand, after the excellent
paragraphs dismissing the potential for solar, hydrogen (despite the
subsequent gasification pitch), wind and nuclear: "Of course technology
is always improving, and down the road some or all of these technologies may
become more feasible. But for the near term, there is no silver bullet. The
scale and complexity of American energy consumption are such that the
country needs to look at many different solutions simultaneously. On the
demand side, this means huge investments in conservation and energy
efficiency - two areas that policy makers and consumers have sadly
neglected." True, but the article neglects them too.

Robert
Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, revealed how U.S. energy policy works in
the minds of politicians and corporate leaders:

U.S. policy in a nutshell: free-market dependence
"The problem is access. Where do you go to find oil you do need to
replace what you're producing? There aren't many alternatives, and most
countries have government oil companies -- they keep it for themselves, so you
can't get in." Culture Change comment: The idea of just who
needs to "get in," and for what, should be asked by anyone
interested in a sustainable world. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle,
March 22, 2005, article
by Robert Collier)

Oil supply basics: 10 points by Jan
Lundberg (Feb. 2005)
Experts:
Oil Production Peak InevitableNational
Public Radio show, August 25, 2004.A thorough and interesting survey of peak oil
predictions and implications: Running
on Empty - A field guide to the coming fuel crunch by Brian KallerJuly 29, 2004: Shell has agreed
to pay $120 million in fines to the SEC and 17 million pounds to its British
counterpart, the Financial Services Association, for the serious accounting and
other irregularities that caused it to overstate its reserves by almost 4.5
billion barrels. More from EmpireNotes:
Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni were hanged
in 1995, primarily because of their attempts to expose the destruction Shell was
causing to their homeland. The wrongful death lawsuit by Saro-Wiwa's son may
come to trial as early as next month. Why are oil prices up?
Denis Frith lists the many factors. See our new Price
Factors page
Matt Simmons
interviews on natural gas and more Dwindling oil no doubt: New York Times
column on theOil
Crunch
The conference "Oil-Based Technology and Economy - Prospects for the
Future" was held in Copenhagen on December 10th 2003.
"Continued economic growth based on the presently
predominant technologies implies continued growth in global oil demand.
" In a world economy still becoming increasingly
dependent on oil, an impending peak and subsequent decline in oil production
implies potential severe economic consequences for the affluent as well as the
developing countries." Review
of Oil-based Technology and Economy - Prospects for the Future"THE
END OF SUBURBIA: Oil
Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream - This is a new DVD featuring
several oil experts.
Dow Jones energy
service produced in March 2004 a series on peak oil and shortage. Read a survey of
experts on the subject, including comments of Jan Lundberg of Culture Change:
Oil Over a BarrelTheir
story drew upon Culture Change's Fall of Petroleum
Civilization webpages.On
peak oil and the impact on the economyby Richard Gilbert, The Globe and MailThe Empire at
Oil's End by Mike DavisBreak out the bicyclesbyGeorge
Monbiot

Are we this close to general economic collapse?
-

If Saudi Arabia does not increase
supply by 3mm barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I
say this, it will be very difficult. We will have difficult times --
Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency

Matthew
Simmons, chief executive of investment bank Simmons & Co. International and
former energy advisor to President George W. Bush, said in a March, 2004 Dow
Jones Newswires series on peak oil:

"Oil
and natural gas still underpin almost all aspects of modern society. Transport
is almost solely reliant on oil. It's oil that is the basis for the fertilizers
that enhance food stocks and that is used in the manufacture of countless
goods. "We have
to radically start changing our lifestyles and trying to come up with a brand
new source of energy. At the moment we can't even replace 5% of the oil we use
with alternatives. "The
world economy has no Plan B."

Trade
and oil: U.S. agriculture exports only buy 11% of oil imports, whereas
before the 1970s oil shocks it was one bushel of wheat per one barrel of
oil. Read more from Lester Brown (author of the new book Plan B) on our
Trade and Petroleum
webpage.

Resources of information available to the public are increasing tremendously,
intensifying the absurdity of so little action on
energy issues.
However, the world of business and the mainstream media treat
oil use and economic growth as good things. China is driving the
oil-demand climb which is linked to higher levels of economic activity.
Record oil demand is encouraged, but will crash with disastrous consequences for
everyone. Short-term greed has brought the world to a dangerous precipice
and is pushing us off into a free fall. Read about the International
Energy Agency's pronouncements on oil demand and the economy.Saudi Arabian oil
is not limitless and may become less abundant soon, according to Matt Simmons of
Simmons & Company International. As investment bankers to the
petroleum industry, the firm gives Matt Simmons much credibility. He has
provided a new analysis of Saudi data. With a world energy infrastructure
"arterial and circulatory system" presentation, Simmons makes clear
how dire is U.S. dependence on energy. See his presentation
in PDF format.
"The new Great Game" is journalistic investigation
into the oil-related U.S. imperialistic expansion into Asia and the Middle
East. Read the Guardian
Oct. 20, 2003 report.

Regarding natural gascritical
to economic growth in the U.S. after World War IIits assured abundance is of critical
concern to those trying to stretch out growth. Alan Greenspan
now sees plentiful natural gas as the key to economic health, but counting on plentiful supplies is as precarious as trekking off
into the desert with one small canteen of water. Read about the North
American Natural Gas Cliff. and see a link to our reportage on Greenspan's
gas.
Of even greater importance than growth (!) is eating.
For a new report on our precarious dependency on natural gas for food production
and preparation, read Eating Fossil Fuels,
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer (From The Wilderness Publications). He looks into
fertilizers from natural gas. The author points out that the U.S. food
system uses 10 times as much energy as it offers in terms of the food
calories. Read Pfeiffer's alarming findings in our natural
gas page.

World
Without Oil, by Lise Maring, reminds us of our multi-faceted petroleum
dependence.

"...for
reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled
on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass
destruction."

-
Paul Wolfowitz, Vanity Fair magazine, May 2003

Conflict intensifies with insider deals
"Let me take you back to Midland, Texas, 1986. A young oil man,
George W. Bush, seems to have trouble finding oil. But he strikes it rich
when his failing drilling partnership is bought out by Harken Oil. Despite
the addition of the business acumen of Bush Jr., Harken faces collapse; but it's
pulled from the brink by a cash infusion from a Saudi, Sheik Bakhsh. The
money from Arabia has nothing to do, we must assume, with Dubya's daddy at the
time holding the post of Vice-President of the Free World.
"The Bakhsh booty continued a pattern of the young Bush
being saved from his dire business decisions by a line of Sheik angels.
His first oil company, Arbusto, going bust-o, was aided by the American
financial representative of the bin Laden family..."
 Greg Palast, August 1, 2003 www.gregpalast.com

__________________________

David Ehrenfeld's Orion
magazine article is a wonderful exploration of issues of shortage. Read
The Joseph Strategy - "As the energy emergency unfolds, is
the blackout of 2003 a preview of things to come?" Click
here.

Cheap oil is running out rapidly and will hit the
economy hard. The shortage will be unprecedented and permanenta
function of market reaction and paralysis from the sudden perception of
dwindling supply. Get ready for the fall
of petroleum civilization and the transition to an ecotopian, sustainable
future.

"This much is certain: no
initiative put in place starting today can have a substantial effect on the
peak production year. No Caspian Sea exploration, no drilling in the
South China Sea, no SUV replacements, no renewable energy projects can be
brought on at a sufficient rate to avoid a bidding war for the remaining
oil."

What is going to happen to us all? The environment has been trashed to a perilous degree. Human
population continues to grow along with ever-more dangerous strife. Climate change could
be irrevocably getting out of
control. Yet, the solution favored by government and the mega corporations
is not to have honest public debate or integrity, but instead start wars and
keep the juggernaut of the world economy rolling along without deviation.

Transitioning to sustainable, ecological economics is a non-issue to our "leaders," while many of usalmost invisible to the mass mediapursue sustainability and
justice. Hence, we must now address:The fall of petroleum civilizationmeans
the end of consuming the planet
via oil-based transport and natural gas-aided agricultureis
happening. These practices have enabled the largest economy and population
the world has ever seen. The dominant oil-based culture has warped
society into a precarious state of out of control consumption and diminished family and community values.
It is the end of abundant world oil supplies that will change everything.
Find out why the apparent glut of oil at "affordable" prices can
disappear overnight. Our columns draw upon petroleum-industry expertise, which you
can glean free of charge from archived Culture
Change Letters. In 1979 SEI founder Jan Lundberg was involved in the
accurate prediction of the Second Oil Shock.

The fall of petroleum civilization is
beginning, no matter if we want such a historic change or not. The
implications of the world's having reached peak oil production are little
understood. To pinpoint exactly when the crash of the petroleum-fired
economy will occur is to be drawn into a distracting debate. The signs pointing to the fall of petroleum civilization are
numerous, and have been increasingly obvious as the years go by. The U.S. turned its back on
sensible energy policy in 1980 and has opted for
"endless" growth. Trends
in wasteful transportation, for example, have gotten surreal.

Astute observers from all walks of life
took note and have begun to take action. They are adopting a multitude of solutions toward eliminating
petroleum and fossil fuel dependency. Sustainable living and alternative
energy, along with communal and non-authoritarian life-styles, are on the
rise.

Today's society of materialism is about
to see radical changes, if it survives at all. Opponents of anti-life,
oppressive rule by corporate government have mounted a fight in the streets
periodically, such as in protests against the World Trade Organization and the
G8 meetings around the world. See webpages for the Sacramento
demonstration against the WTO's agenda for agriculture.

When we watch economic indicators, we
anticipate the big depression that follows periods of economic boom. The
business cycle is well known to economists, but the powers that be have
frantically tried to extend growth and stave off a correction or
shake-out. Here is one unsettling statistical fact that has much more to
do with the real state of the economy and the future than stock market
indicators:

"The economy has now lost almost
2.5 million jobs since February 2001, more than the government said previously,
according to annual revisions released today by the Labor Department. It
is the longest sustained period without job growth since the period before World
War II." [- the New York Times, June 7, 2003]

The lines on the graph above depict falling discovery rates
for world oil (bars) contrasted with extraction rates (dark line). Extraction is
peaking globally about now, with dire implications for the viability of the
global economy and consumerism. This does not have to be all bad, if we
begin to hold public debate on petroleum dependence. [graphic
from Association for the Study of Peak Oil - www.peakoil.net]

Will anyone be immune to the coming
oil-deprived, wrenching adjustment to a post-petroleum civilization?
Agriculture will be affected along with transportation, in a final energy crisis
that will see us all reaching desperately for conservation
and renewable energy alternatives. It will
not be the techno-Utopia pushed by mainstream environmental groups: visualize
depaving, car-free living, and hauling local produce
via bike cart, to name a few sustainable practices.

The crisis is a moral one, when 1.2
million people a year around the world die from car crashes. To this the
pro-car, mainstream environmental groups have no solution when they refuse to
condemn the car. Does this make them almost as accountable and
manufacturers of motor vehicles and politicians?

Jay Hanson, the premier lay student of
peak oil and related issues, creator of dieoff.org, gave a final message when
retiring in winter of 2003 [excerpt]:
"People do not think and then act. They act and
then rationalize. New data from the environment is routinely plugged into
existing mental hardware (like entering a number into a spreadsheet), which is
then followed by an appropriate thought. Since people have no wiring for
"peak in oil and gas production", news of the present energy crisis
cannot generate the appropriate thought. Only prolonged reflection can grow the
required mental hardware to place this critical piece of news in perspective.
Unfortunately, only a few people can invest the thousands-and-thousands of hours
necessary to see both the energy and evolutionary aspects of the human condition
clearly."
Read his whole paper, Farewell
dieoff.org.

Imperial U.S. House of Cards - by
Jan Lundberg
Ancient Rome had an empire that brooked no opposition. Rome exploited
distant lands with military might, and so was able to ship the maximum of
plundered resources back home for lavish consumption. Does this sound
familiar? The Romans used renewable energy,
such as men rowing and sails probably made of hemp. However, according to
traditional Western Civilization's ways, stripping the land of its soil,
valuable metals and timber was pursued until poverty overtook whole populations,
including Romans. Conquerors from northern lands who had their natural
riches more intact came south and took Rome. The questions come up, after the
Iraq War: what is today's Carthage, and is there a Hannibal out there who will
show the (U.S.) empire a lesson? General Hannibal did so when Rome was in
its prime, as he struck at imperialist and cultural weakness. He would
have won if his campaign had been well supported by Carthage. This is not
to say that a conquering of the U.S. is possible or desirable.There may not exist today
an equivalent
to Carthage or Hannibal in the form of a rival empire and consummate soldier,
but they may exist in the form of an unreliable servant: oil. The dangers
of oil are legion: health, environmental (including changing the climate), strategic
(the stuff of wars), and, most crucial of all, agriculture. Along with
natural gas for agriculture, oil is the Achilles heal of modern civilization. Petroleum feeds us and maintains
trade, like no other form of fuel can  as far as can be determined to
date. Human beings have in recent history used this resource to keep growing like a cancer, even
paving over the best agricultural lands for short-term financial gain. No government
has proven itself capable of stopping or reversing the trends of petroleum
dependence. So, it is not only the U.S. empire but entire Petroleum
Civilization that will collapse during the current generation of consumers, as
peak oil hits globally and the party turns into a fight for survival amidst
terrible scarcity by hundreds of millions of ill-prepared people.

Alternatives and solutions
Few people around the world will be immune to the coming oil-deprived, wrenching
adjustment to a post-petroleum civilization. Agriculture will be
affected along with transportation, in a final energy crisis that will see us
all reaching desperately for conservation
and renewable energy alternatives. It will
not be the techno-Utopia pushed by mainstream environmental groups: Instead, visualize depaving,
car-free living, and hauling local produce via bike
cart, to name a few sustainable practices. Food Not Lawns / Community Agriculture Network is a new
group operating in Humboldt County, Calif., under the auspices of Sustainable
Energy Institute. See the new webpage by clicking
here.

Read The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
by Richard Heinberg
(pictured below).Click on:Foreword
by Dr. Colin Campbell, authority on peak oil

More
information-resource-links are at bottom of page.

We at Sustainable Energy/Culture
Change recommend the largest archive of essays and studies on energy,
agriculture, and population: dieoff.org.
Another helpful and more political site is oilempire.us.
Education of the public on these issues has been so far been almost completely
lacking. What we do upon becoming informed is more than a large question:
it is our very future. It is filled with opportunity for a more rewarding
personal life, and presents us a chance to fight for who and what we love and
care about.

Additional information resources
For perspective on the Iraq War by those intimately familiar with
colonialization:www.rupe-india.org
The war was a military solution to a financial problem for the U.S.
The third annual meeting of the Association
for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas in Europe in May was quite a success. Read
the summary at their website:www.peakoil.net

On
peak oil and the impact on the economy by
Richard Gilbert, The Globe and Mail

Oil prices, at their highest levels for more than a decade, are trending
upward. Natural gas prices are going out of sight. Yet more blips in the ups
and downs of fuel costs? Or, as many believe, the start of an era of
ever-more-expensive energy?

Industry magazines have been tracking a controversy about "peak
oil": the notion that world oil production will soon outstrip demand.

Pessimists in this controversy, mostly geologists, are impressed that oil
discoveries peaked worldwide in 1960, and have been running well below actual
extraction levels since the early 1980s. On the other side, the optimists,
mostly economists, believe human ingenuity can postpone the peak in oil
production, perhaps indefinitely.

If the pessimists are right, potential demand will run far ahead of supply
soon after 2007. This mismatch will raise prices to spectacular heights that
will keep actual demand in line with the dwindling supply. The high prices
will wreak economic havoc, as they are already doing to the airline industry.
Worse will be shortages of the liquids that fuel more than 95 per cent of the
world's transportation and make modern civilization possible.

If the optimists are right, technological solutions will be found to keep
the oil flowing. Prices will stay within reason, allowing the continuation of
"business as usual."

A dispassionate look at the controversy exists in a recent 103-page paper
by the Society of Danish Engineers and the Danish Board of Technology, science
adviser to the Danish Parliament. It doesn't draw formal conclusions but makes
several points worth restating:

1. There will be a peak in oil production, likely before 2020;

2. Forcing a later peak, if possible, will require huge investment in
exploration and technology, which may well be wasted. Money would be better
spent reducing oil use;

3. An earlier peak would be "less unfortunate" than a later one.
With an earlier peak, there would be less worldwide dependence on cheap oil
and a more gradual post-peak decline in production, which could be more easily
accommodated;

4. The priorities of governments in energy matters should be to figure out
when the oil-production peak will occur, and then to work to ensure that oil
use peaks before the production peak.

The last point is profoundly important. It would mean high oil prices would
be avoided, or their proceeds could go toward conservation rather than oil
profits.

These challenges are more urgent than meeting Kyoto targets for
greenhouse-gas emissions. Lack of adequate preparation for peak oil could
result in catastrophe.

There's much scope for reducing oil use. The U.S. government reports that
the average fuel economy of light-duty vehicles (including cars, SUVs, and
minivans) is 6 per cent better than its 1987 peak. Meanwhile, average
horsepower has increased 76 per cent, and average vehicle weight is up 26 per
cent. If horsepower and weight had stayed the same, the average light-duty
vehicle could now use 58 per cent less fuel  not 6 per cent less.

Natural gas offers clues to what might happen with oil. It's a North
American rather than a world market. Production here seems already to have
peaked, and prices are rising beyond anything anticipated. For natural gas,
there is possible relief. Spare production in Algeria, Russia and elsewhere
can be liquefied and shipped to North America.

But liquefied natural gas (LNG) is dangerously flammable and explosive.
Logan Airport closes when an LNG tanker enters Boston Harbour to unload at one
of North America's four LNG terminals. The U.S. Coast Guard imposes a two-mile
moving safety zone around each tanker. Nevertheless, new LNG terminals are
proposed for more than 30 locations in North America, including several in
Canada. LNG imports could at best provide temporary relief. The worldwide peak
in natural-gas production may not be far behind the peak in oil production.

What about hydrogen, proposed by many as the panacea for energy woes? More
than 90 per cent is produced from natural gas, already in short supply, and no
other mass production method seems feasible.

We are seeing the end of cheap energy, which shapes every aspect of how we
live, and even sustains a far larger population than the planet could
otherwise support. It's time to stop complaining about pump prices and start
figuring out how our dependence on fossil fuels can be dramatically reduced.

The above article appeared May 11, 2004 and
was called Peeved at the pump?Richard Gilbert is an
energy and transportation consultant.

Angry truckers celebrated this May Day by blocking freeways in Los Angeles
and container terminals in Oakland and Stockton. With diesel fuel prices in
California soaring to record levels in recent weeks, the earnings of
independent container-haulers have dropped below the poverty line. Lacking the
power of big trucking companies to pass rising fuel costs onto customers, the
port drivers  many of them immigrants from Mexico  have had little
choice but to share some of their pain with the public.

In one action, abandoned big rigs blocked the morning commute just south of
downtown Los Angeles on Interstate 5, making tens of thousands of motorists
temporary hostages of the fuel crisis. As one exasperated commuter complained
to a radio station, "This is really the end of the world."

Perhaps it is. As Venezuela's energy minister Rafael Ramirez told the Financial
Times on May 24, "The history of cheap oil may have ended."

Although real (inflation-adjusted) fuel prices are still well below their
1981 maximum, an ever-growing chorus of voices, ranging from former UK
environment minister Michael Meacher to National Geographic magazine,
echo Ramirez. We will soon arrive, they claim, at the summit of "Hubbert's
peak."

M. King Hubbert was a celebrated oil geologist who in 1956 correctly
prophesized that U.S. petroleum production would peak in the early 1970s, then
irreversibly decline. In 1974 he likewise predicted that world oil fields
would achieve their maximum output in 2000; a figure later revised by his
acolytes to somewhere between 2006 and 2010.

If the curve of global oil production is indeed near the point of descent,
as these experts believe, it has epochal implications for the world economy.
More expensive oil will undercut China's energy-intensive boom, return OECD
countries to the bad old days of stagflation, and accelerate the
environmentally destructive exploitation of low-grade oil tars and shales.

Most of all, it will devastate the economies of oil-importing third-world
countries. Poor farmers will be unable to purchase petroleum-based artificial
fertilizers just as poor urban-dwellers will be unable to afford bus fares.
(Already, rising oil prices have brought chronic blackouts to cities
throughout the globe's southern hemisphere.)

The only certain beneficiaries of this coming economic chaos will be the
big five oil corporations and their corrupt partners: the Nigerian generals,
Saudi princes, Russian kleptocrats, and their ilk. Crude oil truly will become
black gold.

The rising value of an increasingly scarce resource is a form of monopoly
rent, and a future permanent crude-oil regime of $50 per barrel (or higher)
would transfer at least $1 trillion per decade from consumers to oil
producers. In plain English, this would be the greatest robbery by a rentier
elite in world history. Someday, Enron may seem like the equivalent of a
liquor store hold-up by comparison.

The oilmen in the White House, of course, have the best view of the lush
terrain on the far side of Hubbert's peak. No wonder, then, that a map of the
"war against terrorism" corresponds with such uncanny accuracy to
the geography of oil fields and proposed pipelines. From Kazakhstan to
Ecuador, American combat boots are sticky with oil.

To cite two recent, almost random examples: First, the Malaysian foreign
minister warned in late May that Washington was exaggerating the threat of
terrorist piracy in the Straits of Malacca in order to justify the deployment
of forces there  right at the chokepoint of East Asia's oil supply.

Second, T. Christian Miller, reporting in the Los Angeles Times,
revealed that U.S. Special Forces, as well as the CIA and private American
security contractors, are integrally involved in an ongoing reign of terror in
Columbia's Arauca province. The aim of "Operation Red Moon" is to
annihilate the leftwing ELN guerrillas threatening the oilfields and pipelines
operated by LA-based Occidental Petroleum. The result, Miller reports, has
been a slow-motion massacre.

"Mass arrests of politicians and union leaders have become common.
Refugees fleeing combat have streamed into local cities. And killings have
soared as right-wing paramilitaries have targeted leftwing critics."

Latin America  Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador  currently
supplies more oil to the United States than the Middle East, and, from the
very beginning, the White House has defined the War on Terrorism as including
counterinsurgency in the Western Hemisphere.

Is there a pattern here? Indeed, is there a US master plan for the control
of oil in an age of diminishing supply and soaring prices? Obvious questions,
but don't ask a Democrat. Although many ordinary Americans have little
difficulty connecting the dots (to use a currently popular expression) linking
blood to oil, the Democrats, with few exceptions, refuse to ask any deep or
probing questions about the economic architecture of the New American Empire.

Thus John Kerry has waffled between advocating an energy version of
Fortress America (via the integration of Canadian and Mexican oil resources)
and complaints that the Bush administration hasn't put enough pressure on
OPEC, especially Saudi Arabia, to expand production. One of the richest
members of the Senate in history, Kerry seems congenitally allergic to the
kind of anti-corporate populism and bold muckraking that has made Michael
Moore an international anti-Bush icon.

Too bad. A genuinely progressive candidate might have found a rich
precedent in the proceedings of a celebrated 1930s Senate investigation into
the role of the international arms trade in fomenting war and intervention.
The Nye Committee, named after the senator from North Dakota who chaired it,
probed deep into the shadow world of arms dealers and munitions corporations.
Is there any less urgent need to call today for congressional hearings into
the oil industry's comprehensive corruption of US foreign policy?

Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities: And Other Tales, Ecology of
Fear, and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never
See, among other books.

Oil
is running out, but the west would rather wage wars than consider other energy
sources
- Break out the bicycles
George Monbiot
Tuesday June 8, 2004 The Guardian

Some people have wacky ideas," the new Republican campaign ad alleges.
"Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry."
Cut to a shot of men in suits riding bicycles.

Sadly, the accusation is false. Kerry
has been demanding that the price of oil be held down. He wants George Bush to
release supplies from the strategic reserve and persuade Saudi Arabia to
increase production. He has been warning the American people that if the
president doesn't act soon, he and Dick Cheney will have to share a car to
work. Men riding bicycles and sharing cars? Is there no end to this madness?

Like the fuel protests that rose and
receded in Britain last week, these exchanges are both moronic and entirely
rational. The price of oil has been rising because demand for a finite
resource is growing faster than supply. Holding the price down means that this
resource will be depleted more quickly, with the result that the dreadful
prospect of men sharing cars and riding bicycles comes ever closer. Perhaps
the presidential candidates will start campaigning next against the passage of
time.

But a high oil price means recession
and unemployment, which in turn means political failure for the man in charge.
The attempt to blame the other man for finity will be one of the defining
themes of the politics of the next few decades.

This conflict was exemplified last
month by the leader of the British fuel protests of 2000, Brynle Williams.
"I'm afraid to say I'm not very proud of what happened three years
ago," he admitted in a documentary broadcast on S4C on May 4. "We
all want turbo-charged motors now ... but we must remember that it's some poor
sod at the other end of the world who ends up paying for it." Five days
later, on May 9, he told GMTV that he was ready to start protesting again.
Self-awareness and self-interest don't seem to mix very well.

To understand what is going to
happen, we must first grasp the core fact of existence. Life is a struggle
against entropy. Entropy can be roughly defined as the dispersal of energy. As
soon as a system - whether an organism or an economy - runs out of energy, it
starts to disintegrate. Its survival depends on seizing new sources of fuel.

Biological evolution is driven by the
need to grab the energy for which other organisms are competing. One result is
increasing complexity a tree can take more energy from the sun than the mosses
on the forest floor; a tuna can seek out its prey more actively than a
jellyfish. But the cost of this complexity is an enhanced requirement for
energy. The same goes for our economies.

They evolved in the presence of a
source of energy that was both cheap to extract and cheap to use. There is, as
yet, no substitute for it. Everything else is either more expensive or harder
to use. Without cheap oil the economy would succumb to entropy.

But the age of cheap oil is over. If
you doubt this, take a look at the BBC's online report yesterday of a
conference run by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. The reporter
spoke to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol.
"In public, Mr Birol denied that supply would not be able to meet rising
demand ... But after his speech he seemed to change his tune 'For the time
being there is no spare capacity. But we expect demand to increase by the
fourth quarter by 3m barrels a day. If Saudi does not increase supply by 3m
barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I say this, it will
be very difficult. We will have difficult times.'" The reporter asked him
whether such a growth in supply was possible, or simply wishful thinking.
"'You are from the press?' Birol replied. 'This is not for the
press.'" So the BBC asked the other delegates what they thought of the
prospects of a 30% increase in Saudi production. "The answers were
unambiguous 'absolutely out of the question'; 'completely impossible'; and '3m
barrels - never, not even 300,000'. One delegate laughed so hard he had to
support himself on a table." And this was before they heard that two BBC
journalists had been gunned down in Riyadh.

The world's problem is as follows. We
now consume six barrels of oil for every new barrel we discover. Major oil
finds (of over 500m barrels) peaked in 1964. In 2000, there were 13 such
discoveries, in 2001 six, in 2002 two and in 2003 none. Three major new
projects will come onstream in 2007 and three in 2008. For the following
years, none have yet been scheduled.

The oil industry tells us not to
worry the market will find a way of sorting this out. If the price of energy
rises, new sources will come onstream. But new sources of what? Every other
option is much more expensive than the cheap oil that made our economic
complexity possible.

The new technology designed to
extract the dregs from old fields is expensive and doesn't seem to work very
well, which is why Shell was forced to downgrade its anticipated reserves
(other companies, under pressure from the US Securities and Exchange
Commission, will surely follow). Extracting oil from tar sands and shales uses
almost as much energy as it yields. The same goes for turning crops such as
rape into biodiesel. Nuclear power is viable only if you overlook both the
massive costs of decommissioning and the fact that no safe means has yet been
discovered of disposing of the waste. We could cover the country with
windmills and solar panels, but the electricity they produced would still be
an expensive means of running our cars.

Just as the oil supply begins to look
uncertain, global demand is rising faster than it has done for 16 years.
Yesterday morning, General Motors announced that it is spending $3bn on
doubling its production of cars for the Chinese market. Seventy-four minutes
later, we saw the first signs of entropy the International Air Travel
Association revealed that the airlines are likely to lose $3bn this year
because of high oil prices. The cheap carriers complained that they could be
forced out of the market.

If the complexity of our economies is
impossible to sustain, our best hope is to start to dismantle them before they
collapse. This isn't very likely to happen. Faced with a choice between a bang
and a whimper, our governments are likely to choose the bang, waging ever more
extravagant wars to keep the show on the road. Terrorists, alert to both the
west's rising need and the vulnerability of the pipeline and tanker networks,
will respond with their own oil wars.

"Every time I see an adult on a
bicycle," HG Wells wrote, "I no longer despair for the human
race." It's a start, but I'd feel even more confident about our chances
of survival if I saw George Bush and Dick Cheney sharing a car to work.

George Monbiot's book The Age of
Consent a Manifesto for a New World Order is now published in paperback.www.monbiot.com

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